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Look, but don't touch
(November 28) -- Alchemedia software protects images on the Internet from unauthorized duplication --
You go into a popular Internet site, say Walt Disney's or one affiliated with your favorite television show, and instantly you have an array of images at your disposal. Want to print out a picture of Donald Duck for your kids, the Sony logo to help sell some electronics on an electronic auction site, or a picture of a TV star for your own private site? It's just a matter of a few clicks.
That's one of the beauties of the Internet � not only are information and images readily accessible but they are easily replicable. Of course, this kind of beauty, like any kind, is in the eye of the beholder. Many of the images Internet users duplicate are in fact copyrighted and, as intellectual or artistic property, worth money.
The producers of the latest episode of the Star Wars saga discovered to their chagrin that fan sites using images drawn from the official site were stealing viewers. Warner Brothers found 427,859 images of its stock of characters and logos appear on independent Web sites just of Geocities alone.
�It's very unnerving thing spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to build a compelling Web site and then have someone take the content and images for free and make money from it,� says Daniel Schreiber, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Alchemedia Ltd., a Beit Shemesh-based company that last month introduced server-based software to help content providers limit access to images on the Internet.
Alchemedia's Clever Content technology sits on the server of the content provider and encrypts images as they are broadcast at the request of users entering the site. Not all the content is encrypted, just the images the provider has chosen. In fact, the system operator can pick and chose at the click of a mouse, which images will be encrypted and which not, giving the providers flexibility to manage image protection.
On the user's side, the first time one enters a site protected by Clever Content, a dialogue box will ask permission to download a small program, the Clever Content Viewer, that unscrambles encrypted images. Users that refuse the download will still be able to access the site � but without the encrypted images. Users that accept it have full access to everything on the site, but if they try to download, save, or print the image, it disappears.
�Clever Content's very modest in its protection,� says Schreiber. �It won't prevent print screen operation, but it replaces the Clever Content image with an alternative image.�
The Clever Content technology has two uniquely attractive features. The first is that the content provider does not have to reconfigure all the content on the server, because the encryption process occurs as the image is being served up, not while it sits on the server.
�From the content provider's prospective, this is critical,� says Schreiber, pointing to a customer of Alchemedia's, Terraserver.com, which sells satellite images. �Terraserver has millions of megabytes of images. We don't change them. When they're on the way to the browser, we quickly encrypt them.�
The second, and by far the most important, says Schreiber, is Clever Content's ability to effectively block the �print screen� function, a challenge that until now has frustrated software experts trying to devise content-protection technology. �Print screen� is a misnomer for what your PC has actually doing; it's not printing the screen, rather telling the computer's operating system to copy what's on the screen to the computer's clip board � all this without the content provider's server being involved. On the server level, there is nothing the content provider can do to do to block the operation.
Alchemedia has gotten around that with a technology that Schreiber, needless to say, will not elaborate upon. �We've developed patent-pending algorithms to monitor screen-related activities in a way that couldn't previously be done � that's the breakthrough.�
On the other side of the coin, there are certain things that Clever Content does not do. It is not an Internet security technology that will block hackers from entering the content provider's computer. Nor does it offer complete protection from users intent on lifting content. A determined hacker could break Clever Content's security once it's been downloaded on to his or her PC. Someone photographing an on-screen image with a digital camera, a device that is increasingly cheap and widely used, could take an image as well, although the quality would be worse than a direct copy from the screen.
But Schreiber says he and the great majority of content providers do not see this as a critical problem because it's a fringe phenomenon. The vast majority of people will be stopped for replicating images by Clever Content, and content providers can than go after the most serious and determined offenders.
�We are not concerned about hackers for the simple reason that our customers aren't,� Schreiber says.
Alchemedia may come to be regarded as Public Enemy No. 1 by Internet users, but Schreiber argues that the free-for-all environment that exists on the Web isn't the users'paradise it's conventionally thought to be.
Because content providers know they will lose control once their images are out on the Web, many are holding back. One way is by using tiny thumbnail images that are difficult to reproduce to a useable size; another is simply not to use images at all. A study by Forrester research, a technology market research firm, estimated that some $300 billion worth of software and media libraries are being held back from the public because of replication concerns. Businesses, like photo stock agencies, whose wares could be reproduced at a click of a mouse won't touch the Web, even though it is the perfect sales tool for them � with the proper protections, they could show their merchandise, bill, and deliver it all electronically.
�The Web is really a form of distributing freebies,� Schreiber says. �Nothing valuable will make it there without protection against replication.�
The potential market for Clever Content is massive � all the more so because for the time being it's without competition, says Schreiber, thanks to the difficulty of blocking the screen print function that Alchemedia has solved. The company is focusing its marketing efforts, which operate out of San Francisco under the direction of chief operating officer Steve Miller, at the entertainment industry and at stock photo agencies. These two segments will enable the company showcase Clever Content's ability both to defend copyrighted images and images for sale.
�We identified these two because they are very definable... You have to start somewhere,� Schreiber says. �Ultimately we'd like to have tools catering to all kinds of Web site.�
For now now, Alchemedia is relying on its own direct sales force, although Schreiber says he hopes to network for channel and partner sales. Internet sales will follow. The goal is less to ramp up revenues than to use its exclusivity to establish a broad installed base and ensure market leadership.
Alchemedia is looking to expand its product offering in two directions. Clever Content is now geared to big corporate content providers that can afford to hefty $10,000 annual licensing fee per CPU for the software. �We will be bringing out versions architected for smaller Web site and for personal sites,� Schreiber says, adding that the beta version of this first such product will begin testing within a month.
The other direction is toward adding more e-commerce functions to Clever Content. Text could also be protected by Alchemedia technology, but the company is not persuing that segment at this time.
All this will, of course, take money. Since its founding in first-quarter of 1998 under the name cSafe, the company has raised $10 million in two rounds of financing from venture capital fund Israel Seed Partners and two US funds, Entertainment Media Ventures (EMV) and Attractor. Schreiber says Alchemedia will be looking for another round of financing early next year but declines to estimate how much capital it will be seeking.
Looking further into the future, Schreiber won't speculate on the company's business direction. For now, he says there is no reason to offer itself up as a buyout target. �This is a robust platform that can exist as a stand-alone product.�
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